Saco River Farms
Meet Farmer Mark
Farmer ⢠Cheesemaker ⢠Homesteader
⢠Writer ⢠Minister
If you have visited our market, bought one of our goats,
eaten our cheese, followed the farm online, or simply wondered
what we are building here, you may have discovered that
Saco River Farms is about considerably more than farming.
It Started with a Farm
Saco River Farms grew from a desire to build a more
sustainable life around family, land, food, and meaningful work.
What began as a homestead gradually became a working farmstead:
raising livestock, growing food, milking goats, making cheese,
preserving harvests, and learning the countless skills required
to produce more of what a household actually needs.
Over time, the farm grew beyond our own household. Today,
Saco River Farms includes our Nubian goat dairy, artisan dairy
production, livestock, gardens and growing spaces, and a Natural
Foods Market connecting our own products with food from other
farms and producers.
But somewhere along the way, farming began teaching us something
larger. Producing food is important. Building a resilient
household is important. Yet neither land nor self-sufficiency,
by themselves, create the kind of life we were really searching
for.
The longer we farmed, the clearer it became:
the answer was never simply greater self-sufficiency.
We needed one another.
Learning Through Doing
From Homestead to Farmstead
Homesteading can teach independence, but mature farming quickly
teaches interdependence. Animals need care every day. Equipment
breaks. Harvests arrive whether the calendar is convenient or not.
Skills take years to acquire, and no single household can efficiently
possess every skill, tool, resource, and pair of hands it may need.
That realization gradually changed the way I understood the farm.
A healthy farmstead is not merely a collection of productive
enterprises. It can become a place where people learn, work,
exchange skills, share responsibility, practice hospitality,
and participate in something larger than themselves.
The farm became a classroomânot only for agriculture, but for
relationships, stewardship, responsibility, and community.
The Deeper Foundation
The Faith Beneath the Farm
Long before many of these ideas had practical form, there was
another journey taking place: a journey of faith.
First Light Ministries grew from years of prayer, Scripture,
teaching, and a conviction that God is awakening and preparing
His people. Its focus is not simply upon understanding the times,
but upon formationâlearning to hear the Lord, walk faithfully
with Him, become disentangled from systems that compete for our
dependence, and rediscover what it means to live as the people
of His Kingdom.
Eventually it became impossible to separate the spiritual
questions from the practical ones. If God is forming a people,
how should those people live? How do faith, household, work,
land, food, hospitality, covenant, and community fit together?
Writing the Journey
From Experience to the Written Word
Much of this journey has also found its way into writing.
Awake Mount Zion â A Call to the Remnant Bride
explores the spiritual awakening and preparation of God’s people.
Arks of Refuge carries the conversation into the practical
and relational formation of intentional Christian communities.
These writings are part of the same journey we are living here:
asking what it means not merely to recognize a changing world,
but to become a people prepared to live faithfully within it.
Where the Paths Converge
Fields of Zion
Fields of Zion grew from the place where these two journeys
began to meet: the spiritual call to prepare a people and the
practical lessons learned through building a farmstead.
The vision explores intentional Christian communities, regional
relationships, food and productive infrastructure, hospitality,
refuge, shared life, and the development of places capable of
serving both those who live within them and those who may someday
need them.
We do not pretend to have every answer. Much of what we believe
has been learned through years of actually tryingâsometimes
succeeding, sometimes failing, and continually allowing the
experience to refine the vision.
Why Does All of This Belong Together?
At first glance, goat breeding, cheesemaking, a natural foods
market, Christian teaching, books, homesteading, and intentional
community may look like unrelated projects.
To me, they have increasingly become parts of one question:
What does a faithful, fruitful, resilient life actually
look like when it is lived rather than merely discussed?
Saco River Farms is one place where we are learning the answer.
First Light speaks to the formation of the people. Fields of Zion
explores how those people and places might become connected.
The books record portions of the journey as it continues to unfold.
However You Found Us, Welcome.
Maybe you came looking for goat kids. Maybe you stopped at the
market for cheese. Maybe you are learning to homestead, searching
for Christian community, or encountered one of the books or
teachings online. However you arrived, you are welcome to explore
the larger story.
Š 2021 ¡ SacoRiverFarms.com.